


My Dear, I Would Recognize You Anywhere

by QueridaMyDear



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: But somehow these idiots haven't hooked up, M/M, Madam Tracy is only mentioned, Mutual Pining, Pining, Post-Apocalypse, Tracy and Aziraphale are best friends and you can't change my mind, i dunno
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-29 21:05:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19838494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueridaMyDear/pseuds/QueridaMyDear
Summary: Besides being a collector of books, Aziraphale was also a collector of art, though his tastes ran toward a fairly specific bend. The particular type of art irritated Crowley whenever he had the opportunity to enter Aziraphale’s flat, to the point that it was hard to stop glaring at them.First off, they were very large. There were only a few pieces, but that was mainly because of the size of them. They were far larger than life, each piece taking up a significant amount of wallspace. Second, the frames were very expensive and tasteful. The care and love Aziraphale had clearly put into picking them to frame these pictures was extraordinarily irritating to Crowley. Third, they each had gallery-quality lighting mounted overhead, an expense and hassle performed only for the most treasured and loved of art pieces. Last, the subjects in each lovingly framed photograph were all nude men who bore a startling, and grating resemblance to Crowley himself.





	My Dear, I Would Recognize You Anywhere

Besides being a collector of books, Aziraphale was also a collector of art, though his tastes ran toward a fairly specific bend. The particular type of art irritated Crowley whenever he had the opportunity to enter Aziraphale’s flat, to the point that it was hard to stop glaring at them. 

First off, they were very large. There were only a few pieces, but that was mainly because of the size of them. They were far larger than life, each piece taking up a significant amount of wallspace. Second, the frames were very expensive and tasteful. The care and love Aziraphale had clearly put into picking them to frame these pictures was extraordinarily irritating to Crowley. Third, they each had gallery-quality lighting mounted overhead, an expense and hassle performed only for the most treasured and loved of art pieces. Last, the subjects in each lovingly framed photograph were all nude men who bore a startling, and grating resemblance to Crowley himself.

It was annoying to Crowley that Aziraphale had gone out of his way to pore through likely thousands of pieces of nude photography in order to purposefully select and then order absolutely gigantic photos of models who looked so much like Crowley he’d had a double take the first time he saw them. Everything was eerily close, from the length of a model’s arms, to the boniness of his wrists. Though the resemblance could only be so much. Either the fingers were wrong, or the jaw was wrong. Each model was sitting or laying down in poses that suggested they were at rest, or had been caught candidly, all of their faces mostly turned away from the camera, hiding the mostly poor facial resemblance.

All except for the man in the odalisque, whose face and hair looked so strikingly similar to Crowley’s he had the unbearable urge to set it on fire. He wanted to banish the image of this man who looked like him but wasn’t him from Aziraphale’s adoring gaze, and he had indeed seen Aziraphale throw fond, happy glances at the photographs whenever he passed by them, which only incensed Crowley further every time he caught that loving expression not directed at himself.

So Crowley took the only natural course of action. He covertly took his own photos of the pictures, mad that they were even on his phone, and carried them to the most skilled photographer he could locate so he could recreate the pictures and replace the hated, adored pictures on Aziraphale’s walls with his own actual likeness.

“I want to reproduce these pictures.” He explained to the woman, who squinted at the picture of the odalisque, then squinted at Crowley, then back at the picture.

“You’re sure this one isn’t you?” The nose was right, the chin was right. If it wasn’t him, it was quite a coincidence. 

“It’s not.” He was annoyed even by the suggestion that it was. 

For each photo, Crowley kept his phone nearby, both him and the photographer referencing it to turn him just so to mimic the angles perfectly. With each shot, Crowley found his heart starting to pound faster, imagining putting these pictures of himself on Aziraphale’s walls, all of his skin bared for Aziraphale to admire at his leisure. 

Though his intent had been to mimic each picture perfectly, he found himself shifting his body subtly, revealing more of his nude abdomen and sharp hip bone, showing more of the long lines of his body, turning more of his rear toward the camera, all with the thought in mind that this was what Crowley wanted Aziraphale to look at; _his_ neck and shoulders, _his_ chest and abdomen, _his_ legs and feet, not at human men who were poor imitations of the actual demonic work of art! 

He painstakingly selected the few of many pictures that would be the ones to grace Aziraphale’s walls with his infernal image, and when they had finally arrived from the printer’s, Crowley was faced with a problem he hadn’t considered; how, exactly, was he going to change out the pictures without Aziraphale noticing?

A convenient distraction arrived in the form of their new friend Madame Tracy asking Aziraphale over for a cup of tea. The woman loved to talk, and Aziraphale loved to talk, and generally they both loved to talk about the same things, for _hours_ , so Crowley found himself with a convenient afternoon to perform his task of removing the offensive images of other men and replacing them with his own.

Once the task was finished, he stood back to admire his work. It was somehow more embarrassing than he’d originally expected, seeing himself, in the nude, occupying a giant swath of Aziraphale’s wall in an exquisite frame and custom-built gallery lighting. The lighting drew the viewer’s gaze to parts Crowley hadn’t noticed, such as the sharp line of his hip bones and the lightly muscled plane of his stomach, just a touch of hair hidden beyond his long thigh. The odalisque was still more revealing and open, displaying the dip of his spine, the dimples above his rear, and the slight inward curve of his waist.

Crowley stared at the pictures, stunned by how vulnerable he looked as he knowingly posed for Aziraphale’s gaze, hungry for his angel to look only at him. He was contemplating taking them down and replacing the original photos, except, he recalled he’d burned them in a fit of devilish glee and watched them disappear into ash.

“Shit-” He tried to think of a way to bring them back so he could undo this. A miracle might do it. The thought of Aziraphale being able to read Crowley when he’d put himself up on the walls made his thoughts race, his head spinning. Would he even be able to handle it if Aziraphale gave him the same loving, adoring expression he’d given the old images? 

Crowley heard footsteps coming up to the flat, Aziraphale back from his visit.  
“Oh, you’re still here? Hello, Crowley.” Aziraphale looked openly delighted to see his friend. “What on Earth were you up to all afternoon?”

“N...Nothing! I was… Mis-alphabetizing your books! Yes, I pulled them all out of order and put them back wrong!” Crowley nodded, acting so very suspicious a toddler would have seen right through him.

“Ah, of course, you are the most devilish of demons, aren’t you?” Aziraphale asked calmly, not believing Crowley’s story for a second. As he settled in, his eyes habitually fell on his framed photographs for a second of admiration, but… Something was different.

Aziraphale walked up to the large odalisque, his eyes scanning the shape of the body, the particular fluff of the hair, the long arms and sinful, lazy legs.

“How very odd.” He murmured. Crowley was attempting to Lounge Casually on an armchair, but his fear of being discovered meant he was reclining very stiffly, looking as uncomfortable as he felt.

“What’s odd?” He asked, wanting to sound casually inquisitive but sounding borderline hysterical.

“This picture… It looks… Different, somehow.” Aziraphale examined the slope of the model’s nose and the cut of his jaw, his eyes just out of view, but there was a stark contrast to the picture he remembered, and something so familiar about the model’s long fingers, the knuckles so recognizable and dear to him, as he had stared at them many times over tea or lunch. 

“D-Different in what way??” Crowley shrieked, nearly sliding right out of the armchair and onto the floor. Aziraphale faced him and saw that Crowley had broken into stress scales, his eyes nearly full yellow as he awaited Aziraphale’s ruling on the photographs. It was very clear to him that Crowley was very stressed about this for some reason. He seemed worried Aziraphale would recognize the deception, but how could he not? Crowley had replaced his human boys with his own graceful visage. The change was only too obvious, moreso after spending 6000 years admiring Crowley. 

“Oh, nothing, dear boy. I suppose I just never noticed before what adorable dimples the model has on his lower back.” 

Crowley sank into the chair, limp with relief. Aziraphale hadn’t noticed! Which was both relieving and _extremely annoying_. Did he really look that much like the man in the old picture!?

Crowley eventually went home, leaving Aziraphale alone in his flat with his new pictures.

“Crowley, my dear…” He sighed reverently, his eyes sweeping over Crowley’s lithe, graceful form. There had been many times he had wanted to stare at Crowley at his leisure, but his demon was always twitchy, always moving, even sitting on a park bench with his legs splayed obscenely, his head lolled, changing direction, never allowing Aziraphale to stare and stare and memorize the curves of his neck. This was even better than the old pictures, which he assumed Crowley had burnt or gotten rid of somehow. The models he’d found were close matches, but none of them, no matter their oddly ethereal human beauty, could match up to the infernal majesty of his demon, his nude body stretched out for Aziraphale to look at for as long as he pleased.

“Thank you… _Thank you_ for this marvelous gift.”


End file.
